BEIJING -- Chinese television reported at least two people had been killed Saturday morning when a powerful earthquake shook Sichuan province. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 6.6 with a depth of less than eight miles. The official New China News Agency reported that it shook buildings in the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu. Several aftershocks were reported. Some flights headed to Chengdu made emergency landings in Chongqing, and flights out of the Chengdu airports were suspended, the news agency reported.

BEIJING - DMG Entertainment, the Beijing-based company that co-produced Hollywood films including "Iron Man 3" and "Transcendence," is in the process of going public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The move will see DMG enter the exchange through a reverse takeover with meat-processing company Sichuan Gaojin Foods. The deal still needs regulatory approval. According to DMG and Sichuan Gaojin, the deal values DMG at $970 million. That's three times the value of Gaojin at the end of 2013.

An activist who was investigating the role shoddy school construction played in the deaths of more than 5,000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was given a three-year prison sentence Monday on charges of possessing state secrets. Huang Qi, 46, a veteran activist and blogger, is the most prominent of more than a dozen people who were arrested for demanding investigations into construction standards after the magnitude 7.9 temblor. Others included prominent artists, former teachers and parents who lost their only children in the earthquake.

BEIJING - The headline news on state-run Chinese Channel 13 was juicy: A mining tycoon and 35 others had been charged with running a mafia-style enterprise in Sichuan province, gunning down enemies in the street, bribing people and operating an illegal casino. But viewers didn't have to just listen to police or prosecutors describe the evidence against the three dozen suspects: CCTV aired extensive clips of many of them, dressed in blue jailhouse jackets, admitting their misdeeds.

Two Sichuan farmers were sentenced to death and two others were given life imprisonment for selling panda skins, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday. Only about 1,000 giant pandas survive in the wilds of Sichuan and neighboring Tibet.

State media reported that 55 people have been killed and seven are missing in flooding across a broad stretch of southern China. A report today by the official New China News Agency said more than 1 million people had been forced to flee their homes in nine provinces, including Sichuan, which is still reeling from the May earthquake that killed 70,000 people. Heavy rain in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces will raise water levels downstream, New China News said.

The body of an American mountain climber has been found after an avalanche in an isolated part of central China, the official New China News Agency said. Rescue workers were still searching for two other American members of the group who were missing on 24,790-foot Mt. Gongga in Sichuan province, Li Zhixin, an official with the Chinese Mountaineering Assn., told the news agency. The report did not identify whose body had been found. Wade Johnson, 24, of Arden Hills, Minn.

Chinese rescue teams carrying tents, quilts and sacks of rice rushed to reach survivors of an earthquake that killed at least 32 people, turned tens of thousands of homes into rubble and cracked reservoirs. Saturday's quake, which China says was a magnitude 6.1, struck Sichuan province along the same fault line as a May 12 earthquake that killed about 70,000. The more recent quake killed 27 people in Sichuan and five in the neighboring province of Yunnan, the official New China News Agency said early today, citing the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

For the second time in nine days, a powerful earthquake struck a remote area of southwestern China, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, officials said Tuesday. The official New China News Agency said the magnitude 6.7 quake struck in an isolated region along Sichuan province's border with Tibet. A magnitude 6.7 tremor rocked the same area April 16, killing four people and injuring five.

BEIJING - A Chinese mining tycoon, his brother and 34 others who allegedly terrorized parts of Sichuan province for 20 years through a mafia-style gang were charged Thursday with murder, weapons trafficking and other offenses. The case, centered on former Hanlong Mining chairman Liu Han and his younger brother, Liu Wei, was touted by state-run media as an example of how authorities are cracking down on corruption. Since formally assuming China's presidency a year ago, Xi Jinping has made rooting out graft a top priority, and the case against the Liu brothers - said to have illegally amassed a fortune worth more than $6 billion in businesses including mining, real estate and electricity - is among the biggest to date.

The Torrance Marriott South Bay, a 17-story hotel next to Del Amo Fashion Center, has been sold to a Chinese real estate developer for $74 million. Sichuan Xinglida Group Enterprises Co., which has built numerous mixed-use projects in mainland China, bought the hotel through its U.S. subsidiary XLD Group, real estate broker John Strauss said. The new owner will keep Marriott as the operator of the 487-room hotel but plans to renovate the property and eventually reposition it as a more upscale inn, said Strauss of Jones Lang LaSalle.

If you follow the peregrinations of local Chinese kitchens, you've probably been hearing a bit about Chengdu Taste lately, a new restaurant specializing in the dishes of its namesake city that was pretty much acclaimed as the best Sichuan restaurant in town from the first days of its opening. When I noted the unavailability of an appetizer translated as "Diced Rabbit With Younger Sister's Secret Recipe," the San Gabriel Valley cognoscenti knew what I was referring to even without a mention of the restaurant's name, and I was sent links to recipes, to articles noting the dish's ubiquity in Chengdu and a short biography of the woman who invented it. (According to Fuchsia Dunlop, second-sister rabbit cubes were popular enough to inspire a Chengdu poet to compose an ode in its honor.)

BEIJING -- A strong earthquake struck China's mountainous Sichuan province Saturday morning, leaving at least 156 people dead and more than 3,000 injured. Chinese authorities assessed the magnitude of the quake at 7.0, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.6. Although nowhere near as powerful in magnitude, the tremor evoked memories of the great earthquake almost exactly five years ago along the same fault line that killed almost 90,000. The earthquake's epicenter was about 80 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, in Lushan county near the city of Ya'an.

BEIJING - When their beds began to shake and the dishes clattered off the shelves, people knew what to do this time. The temblor Saturday morning in Sichuan province was a lesser replay of a killer quake that struck along the same fault line almost five years ago. Still, it was severe enough to leave at least 179 dead and more than 8,000 injured by Sunday, Chinese authorities reported. The 8 a.m. jolt roused residents from their beds, and many people ran into the streets in their pajamas, according to reports from the scene.

BEIJING -- Chinese television reported at least two people had been killed Saturday morning when a powerful earthquake shook Sichuan province. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 6.6 with a depth of less than eight miles. The official New China News Agency reported that it shook buildings in the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu. Several aftershocks were reported. Some flights headed to Chengdu made emergency landings in Chongqing, and flights out of the Chengdu airports were suspended, the news agency reported.

A strong earthquake, registering a magnitude of 6.7, jolted a remote area of southwestern China early today, the official New China News Agency reported. There was no immediate report of casualties. A spokesman for the State Seismological Bureau said the quake struck at 5:34 a.m. local time and was centered near Batang, a town on an upper tributary of the Yangtze River in western Sichuan province near the border with Tibet. He said that "most of the buildings have cracks in the walls.

A Chinese activist who sought to document shoddy construction that contributed to deaths in China's devastating 2008 earthquake has been sentenced to five years in prison for subversion, his lawyer said Tuesday. Tan Zuoren was formally accused of inciting subversion of state power in e-mailed comments about the bloody crackdown on June 4, 1989, on pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square. But Tan's supporters and Amnesty International say he was detained because he planned to issue an independent report on the collapse of school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake, in which about 70,000 people died.

Echo Park has a new fancy cocktail den in Allumette. In the old Allston Yacht Club space next door to the neighborhood liquor store House of Spirits Allumette is the new restaurant by Vagrancy Project chef Miles Thompson. To complement his intricate small plates, including raviolo of liquefied blood pudding with scallop carpaccio and caramelized anchovy; and fried oyster with kimchi ranch dressing, Asian pear mignonette and sea spinach, he's brought on former Pour Vous and Harvard & Stone mixologist Serena Herrick.

In the latest sign of China's rising importance in the global aviation industry, Cessna Aircraft Co. said it would develop a plan to build business jets with the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China. The announcement paves the way for Cessna of Wichita, Kan., to become the first U.S. aircraft maker to manufacture business jets in China, the fastest-growing market for the multimillion-dollar planes. "We believe China represents a significant opportunity for growth," said Scott Donnelly, chief executive of Cessna's parent company, U.S. conglomerate Textron Inc., at a signing ceremony Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.